Finding the killer-app was always the Holly Grail for high-speed broadband advocates, operators and content providers across the world. Public funding in fiber access infrastructures (such as FTTH) is also questioned due to that there does not seem to be enough number of applications available to make the public investment in broadband worth immediately the effort and money.
Video, the most visible value adding app of NGAN, is bandwidth hungry and it seems reasonable to expect to be of higher quality as connection speeds increase. But is video by itself enough to drive infrastructure investments and persuade operators and society that FTTH is a necessity? It might need a push, an appropriate use within a wider context.
I have blogged in the past that it is the quality of service that will probably matter the most amongst consumers and will drive FTTH (high-speed broadband) adoption. How can quality of service be incorporated in a meaningful service proposition? What is the key differentiator between FTTH and other broadband alternatives? It is resilience, always-on and bidirectional ultra-speed connections. So, how can service providers leverage on these features?
Cost reduction is not a viable option for sustainable development. Southeast Asian markets have become synonymous to cheap production, and it is highly unlike that any developed country can come close. The digitization of the modern economy has interconnected the world and altered legacy business models, operational priorities, processes and procedures. In this setting, what makes the difference is efficient access to people and efficient access to resources. Whether local or global, businesses need to employ and collaborate with human capital from within a country, a continent or the rest of the world.
This _IS_ the key to success. The efficient use of scattered people and resources for business planning, production planning, training etc, becomes the key advantage in modern business, because it simply unleashes the dynamics of innovation. Competition can replicate blueprints, designs, or ideas but it’s much, much harder to do the same with innovation and efficient practices for use of scattered resources.
During the last decade, Europe invested a hefty amount of money on distance-learning and collaborative platforms. These tools never achieved strong commercial success, not because they were bad or ill designed, but because they were ultimately impractical and could not add significant value to the users:
1. How can you collaborate effectively with, say, 4 other colleagues on a video meeting and simultaneously share and edit documents over a lousy DSL connection? You can’t. You’ are still doing it in the old way: send a version via email, let each member of the group edit it individually, receive all edits, review and incorporate comments, send it over again, fight over the reviewing comments, sort out misunderstandings, keep versioning in good state, spend hours to correct mistakes in the review etc. By the way, you can forget about the video. You will use an instant messaging tool, you will shut off video and spend much of your time understanding noisy voice conversations and sending text messaging when voice does not get through well. If a call meeting involves multiple partners then a PBX conference bridge is usually preferred.
2. How can you teach and train people and get relevant timely feedback effectively? This has a smaller degree of bi-directionality (compared to a meeting) but it is still hard. On the average, companies run web seminars without video. Presenters are able to connect from remote locations. However, participants see a slide show, with challenged voice quality while often they are asked to connect to a PBX to participate. Feedback gets through a linear stream of texts or via a priority queue on the basis of a press of a button. Another alternative is to use a twitter back channel (often identified by a hashtag). This is practiced in high-tech and social media conferences and it is truly pretty cool but I doubt if the average trainer could work with it, let alone the average trainee! Nevertheless, there are seminar platforms with richer features (e.g. video), however, few (companies) buy them, because few (users) will/can use them.
3. How can someone work efficiently away from the corporate premises? The minimum requirement is the ability to download and upload files fast from the corporate file server. But, this can’t be done via the asymmetric DSL connections. To be able to work from home as if you were in the office you need bidirectional 100Mbps connections, to enjoy the same speed you have at work.
These needs exist in the present day. But are they met by current connection speeds?
What is missing from today’s businesses is a genuine, novel form of global collaboration among professionals extending beyond urban settings. The technology is available for many years. already Experience is accumulated after years of research. What was missing (until now) was the high-speed Internet access on the user end.
Altogether, Tele- has the potential to become the new killer-app: teleworking, teleconferencing, tele-education and so forth. It addresses a mass market: all employees and all employers. Profit-wise, business models can capitalize on the savings (travels, salaries, efficiency, etc). It also changes dramatically how business is made, and provides new routes to efficiency. Last and not least, with connection speeds of 100Mbps and above it is also feasible.
